Someone Next To You (18th Wedding Anniversary Edition)

Kate, Maddy, Chris

When I was in high school I carried around a black, hardcover journal with a slim elastic strap holding the pages together. Inside the cover, on those pages, lived my words: poems, musings, and prayers. Few people ever read what I wrote because I wasn’t all that prone to share, but sometimes I’d turn the words into a song and a friend or two would listen with kindness.

During my junior year of high school I lent the notebook to a girl I’d met in AP U.S. History. A few days later she was filled with angst, not because my poetry had seeped into her system, angsty as it was, but because she had lost the journal of writings. This girl was named Kate, and she is now my wife.

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About a month ago I stumbled upon a song by Anna Tivel called, “Dust and Magic.”

It begins like this:

“I’ve been loving you for awhile now, turned your colors in the light

Amber glass beside the ocean, the sand that lightning strikes

And I watch you by the water, throw your voice into the wind

But ain’t no comfort in an echo, that don’t come back again

And babe I’ve been a lot of things, a hero and a fool

But none of them compare to being someone next to you”

The girl who asked to read and borrow my collection of writings has been loving me for awhile now. In fact, we’re celebrating 18 years of marriage on this day, which is something considering she lost my book of poems. This last year, in particular, has been filled with life-altering transitions in our lives, but specifically in my own. An unsettling of sorts. Or maybe a resetting.

In the first verse of the song, the first time I heard it, I could see Kate (as in a vision) watch me by the water throw my voice into the wind. Along the banks of the Rio Costilla is where the vision took place, and the wind whipped through the meadow. It was the type of wind one hopes is the Wind, life-breathing Wind, dream-catching Wind. Her presence was tangible, a long distance hug, and in the way it stretched toward me as I shouted into the Wind, not at the wind, she remained someone next to me.

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In the second verse Tivel names me, in spirit and in truth, but her words also name the way Kate has been with me and for me and watching me in this season of liminality, like vocational purgatory, like searching for a spark by slapping a metal shovel against flint, a flailing attempt to burn again.

Tivel sings,

“And your eyes are tired and hungry, waiting on a sunny day

Looking out the cloudy window, at the never ending rain

But i’ve seen you light on fire, and I know you will again

It’s just the way your heart is wired, just the way you’ve always been

And babe I’ve been a lot of things, I’m proud of just a few

But none of them compare to being someone next to you”

If anyone has implored me to listen to my heart, the way it is wired, the way it has always been, then that person is Kate. Who could understand me better than the person I’ve been with for more than half my life, than the best friend who lost my poems but never lost my words? The one who is the master of so many things, keeper of so many talents, accomplisher of so many achievements but would say, and I know she would, that none of them compare to being someone next to you. And I’d reply with tears. And then squeeze out, me too. Words in the wind.

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The final verse of Tivel’s quintessentially chorus-less song is more than I can handle. I am not falling into a heap each time I hear it, I am a heap. Wrecked, balled up like the Piñon cones in a burst of cold wind, but I am loved.

She sings,

“This house is rust and wreckage, holding on by just a hope

But I believe in dust and magic, and every word you ever wrote

All the reasons that you wake up, all the reasons that you dream

All the beautiful conditions of a man up in flame

And babe i’ve been a lot of things, and most of them were true

But none of them compare to being someone next to you”

Nothing more perfectly describes the complicated beauty of navigating life with the one I love most during this fruitful and painful past year. The woman next to me has read everything I’ve written since I was 16 and here I am at 41 trying to convince myself (and a plethora of editors) that I am the writer I’ve always been. She believes this about me more than I ever have.

For a year now we’ve lived in a 1982 Airstream that she tricked me into restoring with her, a silver tube of “rust and wreckage” (or mice) on many days, but also a home that houses hope.

Holding on by just a hope.

Praying we don’t blow away, but if we do, it’ll be hand-in-hand.

But not only that, together we’ve chosen to embrace a life, this year in particular, of dust and magic (seriously, life atop Piñon Ridge is packed with both and I can feel it between my teeth or on my lips when I kiss our dog). I believe in the dust and magic with more unrelenting certitude than any doctrine I’ve ever espoused.

Let it be known that the woman who would rather be next to me, and the only one I’d want to be next to, has written her love and support onto my skin, like the “KT” tattooed on my ring finger, in ways I can’t articulate over the past year. So thankfully I came across Anna’s song to do the articulating for me, but Kate has been speaking it first:

But I believe in dust and magic, and every word you ever wrote

All the reasons that you wake up, all the reasons that you dream

All the beautiful conditions of a man up in flame

Kate Townley, it is as if you have spent the last year of our marriage and best-friendship whispering these words to me in action and in voice. I will keep writing because I know you’ll keep reading and I’m bound to catch fire soon. You are more to me than anything I can tap out on this keyboard, so for this year, on our 18th anniversary, I’ll sing along with Anna Tivel for you, wrapped in dust and magic, two dirtbags in love. I forgive you for losing my notebook all those years ago. Who would’ve guessed then that our shared life would be filled, now, with 25 years worth of stories, musings, poems, and reflections. These we will never lose, only cherish. Perhaps all we’ve written together has matured a bit and grown a little since my black notebook, but my angst lives on as you love me all the while.

I’ve been a lot of things, Kate, but none of them compare to being someone next to you.

Lots of “dust and magic” as we found an unopened Bud while filling up a water cube

Oh look! Two dirtbags build a greenhouse!